


To Begin With

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle (TV 2009)
Genre: Best Friends, Coffee, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Honeymoon, Just Married, Married Couple, Married Life, Partners to Lovers, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-16 13:10:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20820464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: There is no husband in her bed. The sun is curling its fingers around the edges of the bedroom curtains. It’s nudging at her in that gentle, sotto voce way that’s so much worse than someone just whisking the covers away and declaring it’s time to get up. And there is no husband in her bed.





	To Begin With

**Author's Note:**

> Set the morning after Time of Our Lives (7 x 06)

There is no husband in her bed. The sun is curling its fingers around the edges of the bedroom curtains. It’s nudging at her in that gentle, _sotto voce_ way that’s so much worse than someone just whisking the covers away and declaring it’s time to get up. And there is no husband in her bed. 

Her eyes pop open. Breath rushes into her body and stirs a million, billion butterflies. There should be a _husband _in her bed. Not a fiancé, boyfriend, partner, plucky sidekick—a _husband_. She pulls the covers up to her chin. She presses them in fists against her mouth to keep what might well be a girly squeal from making its way out into the quiet of the bedroom, the quiet of the huge house, the quiet of the first day of the rest of their lives. There should be a husband in her bed.

She waits a while. With the covers pulled up to her chin and her toes curled and flexed and curled again, she waits, listening, listening, but the kitchen is far away, and that’s probably where he is. He’s probably assembling something ridiculous on a tray, and she lies there, picturing him in bare feet with his robe flaring out behind him as he turns from the stovetop to the refrigerator to the cabinet up high with the fancy, fancier, fanciest plates.

She drifts, not sleeping exactly, but drifting. Her mind nudges back at the morning sun. It elbows it right out of the way, because there’s room for nothing but fire sinking below the horizon, violet and midnight blue crowding in from above. There’s room for nothing but bold brushstroke clouds and stars winking on at the end of their perfect day.

Her thumb brushes over the new weight encircling her fourth finger. She shivers, remembering the satisfaction of the click of it against the band of her engagement ring, the momentous swell of feeling as her breath caught and she felt the presence of her dad over her shoulder, her mom everywhere. She drifts, but it’s been a long time now. The sun is more insistent, not content with a whisper any longer. His pillow, when she draws it into her body, is long cool and the scent of him is faint.

It’s been a long time, and there is no husband in her bed, no husband backing into the room, barefoot and with infinite care, as he balances a tray with a cluster of perfect winter roses in one corner. It makes her grumpy, but fills her with sly satisfaction, too. If she has to hunt him down—if she catches him in whatever over-the-top act he’s embroiled in—there’ll be the good kind of hell to pay. He’ll be nervous and fast-talking. He’ll backpedal, she’ll advance and there are so many first times ahead of them, because he’s her _husband._

She throws back the covers. She scowls at the sun and gasps at the cool bedroom air, because it’s November. It’s _November, _and though the world wouldn’t have dared to offer up anything but a beautifully mild evening for their perfect day, the huge house takes forever to heat, and how the heck is it fair that the stupid sun barged in to wake her and it’s still _cold._

She grumbles and finds a robe. A thick one of his, first, because it’s _cold_, then a silky one of her own, because there’s a first-time opportunity waiting in the kitchen, on the hillside overlooking the water, by the pool, and she wants to look the part. She scurries on bare feet herself, retracing what must have been his steps. She patters down the stairs and he meets her there, all in a rush.

“No, no, no, no, no.” He grabs her around the waist and swings her in a one-eighty halfway back up the stairs. “You have to go back.” 

“Castle, what?” She digs her heels in at last. Not literally. That would take them both back down the stairs, ass over tea kettle, but she grabs hold of the polished wood railing and tugs the other way. “What is _wrong_ with you?” 

“Me?” He looks flummoxed. Annoyed. “Not me. Here.” Now he looks guilty. His eyes shift away. “Well. Me. I should have thought.” He rouses himself. He tugs her up another few stairs with renewed determination. “But I did think now. I thought and I’m fixing it. It’s fixed. It’ll be here soon, but you have to go back to bed.” 

“Castle. _Stop_. I’m not going back anywhere!” She plumps down on her butt, three stairs from the top. The hard wood is freezing through the thin silk of her robe, and she hisses. “Here? What’ll be here?”

“Machine.” There’s more than that, but he drops two steps below her and mumbles miserably against her knee. It’s the only thing she can make out until he heaves a sigh and tips his head up and back to face her. “I’m sorry. This is the worst.” 

“The worst?” She grinds the heel of one hand into the knot of a headache that’s started to move in between her eyebrows and grabs a fistful of his hair with the other. “Machine?” 

“Espresso machine.” His eyes squeeze shut. She can see a companion headache settling in between _his _eyebrows. “Your latte. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.” 

“We’ve got the french press.” She laughs and taps him on the head. Her stomach rumbles in anticipation as she thinks ofto-die-for pastries. “And then we walk down . . .” She trails off in horror.   
  
“It’s closed.” He buries his face against her knee again. “It November and everything’s closed, and I can’t believe—”

“Castle!!” She slides her palm over his mouth. She laughs, a little weakly, a little miserably, because those pastries. Her _latte_. “This is hardly a tragedy.”

There’s muffled outrage from behind her hand. His eyebrows lift to encompass all the indignation under the sun. He twists free of her hold.

“You’re my _wife!_” His voice bounces off he hardwood stairs, off the bright white walls and the high ceilings. It bounces around the huge house and the wide world. “How is it not a tragedy that you are not in bed and I am not bringing you the first latte of the rest of our lives _right now?”_

She doesn’t have an answer for him. Not right away. There are a million, billion butterflies beating their wings inside her. She’s his wife. Not his fiancée, his girlfriend, his parter, the girl whose pigtails he’s dead set on pulling. His _wife_.

“You bought a machine?” she says finally. She gives him a sly look out of the corner of her eye. “A fancy one like the precinct’s?”

“Way fancier,” he scoffs. “They have smart machines now. You can control it right from your—”

“And they’ll set it up?” she cuts in. Her mind is working over time. “You probably paid them, like . . . a bajillion dollars to set it up.”

“Not a _bajillion,”_ he protests, but she’s already up and away. She’s already surveying her options from the landing above him.

“Put a note on the door.” She mentally reviews the layout of the whole damned, sprawling, _spectacular _place and identifies the point that’s as far from the kitchen as possible. “A very _detailed_ note, and then have it . . . text you or send you a drone or whatever—“

“There’s this open source hack where you can get your roomba to _vroooooooom, beep, beep_, right into your room!” He makes ridiculous hand motions to go with the ridiculous little boy noises. He is _ridiculous _and he’s her husband.   
  
“A _note.” _She whirls, her silk robe flaring seductively around her. “Leave a damned note and meet me on the balcony.”

“The balcony?” he frowns. “It’s November.”

“It _is _November. And your fiancée has very fond memories of that balcony.” She catches the corner of the wall and peers back at him. “Now your wife has a list of demands.”

“Demands.” He shoots to his feet. “Yes. Absolutely. A note.” He starts down the stairs then rushes all the way up to her. He hooks her fingers half a second before they’re out of reach. He reels her in and kisses her breathlessly. “Wife. That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?”

“Cool.” She laughs right into the kiss. “Gonna be cooler on that balcony.” She grabs hold of the front of his robe. She pushes him away, then pulls him back. She steals one more kiss, then pushes him away again. “Better have a plan.”

“Oh, I have a plan.” He starts down the stairs. She sees his fingers twitching for a pen. She sees him writing the note in his head already and moving on to the next thing and the next and she can’t wait. She and the million, billion butterflies beating their wings inside her absolutely cannot wait. “Your husband has plans, Beckett.”

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: A little something hatched from a rejected Dialogic. Happy National Coffee Day. 


End file.
